PHP Fatal error when trying to access phptheadmin mb_detect_encoding

fatal errorPHPphpmyadmin

Not sure what happened, but below is what the log is giving me when trying to access phpmyadmin, please help. Trying to debug a different problem and ran into this. Not really possible to revert back to when it was working.

PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined function mb_detect_encoding() in
/usr/share/php/gettext/gettext.inc on line 177

When trying to go the the site, I get this error, I think it's likely the two errors are related:

Database connection error (1): The MySQL adapter 'mysqli' is not available.

Best Answer

First error is caused by php because the extension mbstring is either not installed or not active.

The second error is output of phpMyAdmin/your site asking you to install / enable the mysqli extension.

To enable mbstring and mysqli edit your php.ini and add/uncomment the two lines with mbstring.so and mysqli.so on unix or mbstring.dll and mysqli.dll on windows

Unix /etc/(phpX/)php.ini

extension=mysqli.so
extension=mbstring.so

Windows PHP installation folder\etc\php.ini

extension=mysqli.dll
extension=mbstring.dll

Don't forget to restart your webserver after this.

EDIT: User added he was using redhat in the comments so here's how you install extensions on all CentOS/Fedora/RedHat/Yum based linux distros

sudo yum install php-mysqli
sudo yum install php-mbstring

restart your werbserver
sudo /etc/init.d/httpd restart

you can verify your installation with a little php script in your document root. This lists all settings, versions and active extensions you've installed for php

test.php

<?php
phpinfo();